Hemblington is only a few miles from the eastern edge of Norwich, but in this rolling landscape of narrow lanes, hedged fields and copses south of the Bure it feels more remote than it actually is. Its church feels more remote still, for it sits away from the village on a crest that must be an ancient site. At any time of the year there is a restlessness, the breezes from the marshes and the North Sea beyond swaying the trees of the secretive little churchyard. From a distance the church appears a sentinel, but closer to it is more intimate, and reveals itself as a humble little round-towered building. The Norman tower has been battered and repaired over the centuries, and the church which stands against it was substantially rebuilt in the 14th Century, although as Pevsner points out, the nave roof is of a century later. At the start of the 21st Century the north doorway was opened up and an elegant little structure in the shape of a porch added containing a kitchen and toilets. It is now the main way into the church. Incidentally, it is worth pointing out quite how welcoming this church is to pilgrims and passing strangers, for it is not true of all the churches in this area. The nearby churches at Little Plumstead and Strumpshaw are both kept locked without keyholder notices.

Be that as it may, you step into a simple interior with brick floors and old wood lit from clear glassin all the windows. This plain setting is a perfect foil for one of two striking, even startling, survivals here. This is Hemblington's 15th Century font. What makes it unusual is that it is brightly painted, as indeed most late medieval fonts must have been at the time they were installed. The recolouring here was done in the 1930s by the art historian Ernest Tristram, an expert in late medieval church painting. It is certainly impressive. The bowl has eight panels of saints, each of them seated. From the east, anti-clockwise they are St Thomas of Canterbury dressed in full pontificals, St Barbara with her tower, St Agatha with a sword striking her bare breasts, an Apostle who may be St Peter, The Holy Trinity with the seated figure of God the Father holding the crucified Son, St John the Baptist pointing to the Lamb of God on a book, a king who may be St Edmund, and St George sitting rather awkwardly with his feet on a dead dragon. There are further figures around the shaft, including St Lawrence with a finely carved grid iron, St Leonard with his manacles, St Margaret dispatching a dragon with her cross, St Catherine with her wheel and sword, St Stephen and St Mary Magdalene.

Fonts of the 15th Century were part of an ongoing project to assert orthodox Catholic doctrine in the face of what were often seen as local abuses and superstitions. But Hemblington also has evidence of the shadowy devotions of more than a century earlier. This is on the north wall, and it is the best single surviving wall painting of the narrative of St Christopher in England. It was also restored by Professor Tristram in the 1930s. The giant figure of the saint bestrides the river opposite the south doorway, just as he does in dozens of East Anglian churches, but here his staff has become a club, and on either bank there are smaller scenes depicting events in his story as recorded in the Golden Legend, a collection of hagiographies compiled in the 13th Century which was hugely popular in the late medieval period as a source for art and storytelling. There are about twenty scenes here. Those to the west of the saint recall his life as a pagan before conversion, and these are mostly lost to us now. But on the east side the scenes are well-preserved, vivid and immediate in their clarity. They show the trials and tribulations he underwent in his life as a Christian, including the occasion on which two women were sent to tempt him in prison, and another where he is led to the executioner's sword. Another shows him tied to a tree being flogged, an echo of the scourging of Christ; another shows him being shot through with arrows, which would have immediately brought to mind the martyrdom of their own St Edmund to the medieval East Anglians.

There is some evidence of the liturgical practices of the Hemblington parishioners of the late medieval period, for will evidence reveals that there were three guild altars here where lights burned for the dead. It is even possible to trace where these guild altars may have been, for on the north side of the nave beside the chancel arch there is a tall cusped image niche with a pedestal attached, where a statue of a saint would have stood. On the opposite side of the chancel arch are what appear to be two wide image niches which have been hollowed out of the wall. A window on the north side of the nave has a flight of steps within its splay which once would have led up to the rood loft above a screen which is now lost. The parishioners who paid for the font and the beautifying of the church as the Reformation approached are probably among those remembered by brass inscriptions in the nave. These are to members of the Blake/Blakke family, each of them asking in Latin for prayers for their souls, and they're dated from the 1480s to the 1520s.

A later brass was added in the middle of the 17th Century to remind us that here lyeth the body of Rebecka Howlet who deceased at the age of LXVI anno 1630. The lettering is simple, even naive, quite a contrast with the elegant lettering of a century or more earlier, a reminder of the suspicion that 17th Century puritanism had for beauty. It is sad to think of the richness that was once was not just here, but in thousands of village churches all over England. So much lost, so much destroyed. And yet enough remains at Hemblington to give a hint of the devotional life of late medieval East Anglia.

Simon Knott, October 2022

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